20 days...beauty...where do you see it?

   Last night I attended a friends' wedding. I don't get dressed up with hair and makeup done often, but it is fun to do when I get the chance. People tell me I should do it more frequently, but it is generally laziness on my part that keeps me from doing it :) I admit it.  So this is how I looked last night

Looking at this picture I think it has finally really hit me how much hair I will be shaving off in 20 days.   I have a lot of hair :) I have wondered since I started this process and people have questioned me, if it was about me losing my hair or the perception from society about women and hair.

Last night I got a little sad about the fact that I would be bald. I wondered if people would have complimented me as much with no hair as they did with long curly hair. (Don't get me wrong I know my friends compliments are genuine and lots of them are about the beauty of me as a person enhanced by me being dressed up and done up!) But as I sat in that thought for a minute I remembered the teenage girl battling cancer getting ready for a school dance or her prom and having no hair. Or the elementary aged girl whose friends have pigtails and braids when she can't. I can't imagine how unbelievably  hard that scenario is for those girls or their parents.

It is easy for me in my mid thirties to decide to shave my hair. To chose to face societies looks, stares, comments and questions about being bald. It is easy for me to say hair is just hair and it grows back. But I am not the one losing it as a side effect of medicine. I am not losing my hair providing a daily reminder as I look in the mirror of the battle being waged inside my body.

So while I am nervous and I am sure when I see all the hair gone will be a little sad and maybe even emotional, it is minute as compared to all the kids battling cancer. So friends  I have a challenge, if you see a child, male or female, young or old whose is bald take the time to tell them they are beautiful! Make them smile.

Donate if you will to help Child Cancer research
http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/mypage/579066/2013

22 days

                    In 22 days I will go from having hair halfway down my back to being bald. I have been told I am crazy, insane, amazing, weird and a variety of other questions/comments  have been thrown at me as to the why I am shaving my head.  I have been asked why not just donate it to Locks for Love, which by the way I am doing as well. The answers to all of this started out simple and easy in my mind, they have become a little more complex but the root of they why is still the same.

Childhood cancer SUCKS. It has always sucked, but when it touches your life, your family, suddenly the reality of it becomes much more apparent, much more tangible.  This little boy is the reason I will go from long hair to no hair in 22 days.

At the beginning of March 2012 my best friend's life was turned upside down. Her family became the "1 every 3 minutes" that heard the words none of us ever want to hear, your son has cancer. Since then it has been a whirlwind of doctors appointments, treatments, hospitals and tests. Through all of it M has stayed happy and charming. In fact during the "off" treatment times you might not even know he was sick if you didn't know. His parents are rock stars and his big brother is awesome! 

I am far away, the other side of the country, so I don't get to be there to be a daily support. I call and check in but it is not the same. So when my school signed up to do St Baldrick's for the 3rd year, I knew it was something I could do to "help". I wanted to do something to make a difference and show this little boy what a hero he is to me.  I am not sure that at 2 he will understand the symbolism behind why I am shaving, but he will know someone else is now bald like him! 

Hair is a simple price to pay if it helps find a cure!

If you feel moved please donate to my head shaving :)

http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/mypage/579066/2013